“Bel,” Nicodemus tried to keep his whisper for Bel’s ears alone, “Bel, do not listen.”
Lamb. Nicodemus gave a start at being addressed.Lambchop, the creature repeated the word slowly, as if it did not know it and had never said it before,I will teach thee.
Bel was tense wherever Nicodemus pressed his hands.
Nicodemus shook his head. “Bel, no, I don’t want it. Do not listen.”
The creature laughed again.The asterion will beg.
“Bel, no.”
We could share, it suggested, as easily as Nicodemus had offered Bel a cookie.Such hunger.
Bel shifted, turning slightly to the side with Nicodemus still pinned behind him.
Breath was warm on Nicodemus’ ear, or perhaps he imagined it.He will take all of you. Nicodemus flinched away from the voice and the laugh when he pushed even closer to Bel’s back.You will cry and plead and he will revel in it.
“No.” Nicodemus said it for Bel, trying to warn him.
Bel turned to gaze down at him with fires in his eyes that did not come from any window.
“Of course, I would, lambchop,” he promised in his mild, undisturbed voice. “If you gave me your heart, I would not give it back.” He leaned in, barely audible although their breath mingled. “I would eat it to make sure it was mine.” He pressed a kiss to Nicodemus’ shocked lips, and then another, his teeth sharp and on the edge of painful. Nicodemus’ whine was soft and involuntary, and he thought, for a moment, that surprise held Bel still. It was only then that Bel said, in a low, low, whisper, “Do not leave Alistair until I return.”
A red-purple flame appeared in the air in front of him, above Nicodemus’ hands, and Bel leaped into the fog.
It swirled around him like heavy curtains, leaving not a sign that he had ever been there.
NICODEMUSWATCHED his panicked, fast breaths disappear into the fog just as Bel had. He let himself be briefly distracted by the question of the oncoming winter, wondering if it would be colder than usual in town because of this murderous creature or if the winter would have been a wild one anyway; the Farmer’s Almanac had offered only opinions about an early frost. Then he thought of that creature whispering in Bel’s ear and his panic returned.
Bel had seen it even though Nicodemus had not. Nicodemus was not even entirely sure it had a form, or that it hadn’t been in two places at once. He didn’t think that was possible, but using the powers of the Realm required only imagination and will, according to Bel. He’d said nothing about physics or any other sciences.
Nicodemus turned his head this way and that, straining to find any sort of sound from within the fog, but Bel and Bel’s suitor were long gone, and all he could hear was muffled conversation from one of the buildings nearby.
“Bel!” Nicodemus shouted anyway, with one hand gripping his shirt tight and the other supporting a small, hovering flame. “I know you can hear me!” He knew no such thing, but had no reason not to believe it, even if he also believed Bel would remain silent rather than lead the creature back to Nicodemus. His heart thundered behind his ribs, as it generally did when Bel came to mind. He had thought it nerves before. Some of it still was. “Bel!” he tried again, futile and shrill.
“Shut up!” someone shouted back from above, annoyed, human.
Nicodemus hunched his shoulders and ducked his head, then remembered they likely could not see him and wouldn’t care about a worried asterion anyway. They only wanted quiet.
“It is not luring me, not seriously,” Nicodemus heard himself say with a strange petulance to a Bel who would not answer. “It is luringyou, you bullheaded….” He trailed off there because he did not sound angry; he was scared and it was obvious. The creature had offered a challenge, if not a game, and Bel had taken it up, convinced he was the only one who could handle it. Perhaps he was when it came to strength in the Realm and keeping calm. But it had continued to make offers and Nicodemus didn’t know if Bel even realized it. Keeping Nicodemus safe should not have been a lure, should not have worked as surely as it had.
Except the creature tracked want, and Bel wanted.
“To be my hero?” Nicodemus asked in a whisper, because he couldn’t have asked it any other way. “Or to keep me safe?”
There would not be an answer. Bel was going to destroy it or die chasing it, and Nicodemus didn’t care if Belwashard to kill, there were a lot of things a creature like that could do besides murder him.
That was the sort of thought Nicodemus usually tried to avoid. The peculiari that lived in or passed through the house faced all sorts of dangers, and Nicodemus did his best not to consider any of the dangers directly. He tended to injuries, and he read whatever he could to have information available for them, and he saw that the peculiari were fed and clean and had soft beds to sleep in. And when they were away, working, in constant peril whether they admitted it or not, he…fussed about the house, and paced the library, and passed the windows that looked down on the Ring in the yard more times than he ought to.
He did that for all of them, and he did it, frowning, supremely restless, the longer Bel was away with no word, and he did not cease frowning when Bel returned, because Bel would be rumpled, or dirty, or in bloodstained clothes, and he—
Nicodemus took a breath.
If he had called to Bel then, he wondered if Bel would have heard. If it was a matter of the degree of his desires, then he would never know, because Nicodemus had only noticed the depths of them tonight. His foolishness in that regard would have made him blush but he was far too anxious about Bel to fret over his obliviousness.
For now, there was only the fact he wanted Bel. He wanted Bel in front of him and alive, and he wanted Bel’s mouth and all the things Bel hinted he would do andsaidhe would do and promised with his gaze. He wanted everything. He wouldtakeeverything.
Nicodemus peered into the hidden places in the alley nearest him. “Bel,” he began precisely, perhaps still shrill and frightened but also loud and clear. “Bel, I will go to the manor and walk into that Ring if you don’t appear. Here. Now.”
